NRA’s Top Lobbyist In Florida Kept From Hearing Due To Death Threats

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The anti-gunners like to accuse gun rights activists of a lot of things. We’ve been accused of lacking sufficient size in certain appendages, for one (that’s a common one). We’ve also been accused of being violent, malicious people just looking to hurt others.

Marion Hammer, the NRA’s top lobbyist in Florida, didn’t attend Tuesday’s public hearing on a Leon County gun ordinance because of death threats.

Hammer, usually a staple at legislative hearings on gun bills, acknowledged she wouldn’t attend the hearing in an email exchange over the weekend with County Commissioner Bryan Desloge.

“The death threats come with the job,” she said in a Sunday email. “I’ve dealt with it for many, many years. But it is so ugly this time NRA is insisting that I listen to my security advisers. It always amazes me how these people who claim to want to stop violence are so quick to threaten violence. I have never been afraid of them but it really makes me angry when they threaten my family.”

Desloge, in a Saturday email, said he learned about the threats from his aide, who’d spoken with her.

“I regret that’s happening to you,” Desloge said. “You don’t deserve to be treated in that manner — you’re just doing your job, just as I will be doing mine when I cast my vote.”

After a nearly five-hour debate, commissioners voted 6-1 to adopt an ordinance requiring background checks and a three-day waiting period for all private firearm sales on publicly accessible property, from gun shows to garage sales. Desloge, the only Republican on the commission, voted against the measure.

Hammer, past president of the NRA and executive director of Unified Sportsmen of Florida, sent a surrogate, Alex Hoffman, to the hearing. Hoffman didn’t mention the death threats, saying only that Hammer “was unable to attend the meeting tonight.”

As much as the rules annoy me, nothing angers me like death threats against someone simply because they hold a different view.

What this tells me is that at least someone doesn’t want debate. They don’t want to hear differing opinions. They don’t care about a basic human right, the right to own the means to defend oneself. They don’t care about any of that.

They want compliance.

We’re supposed to be doormats. Unfortunately, a lot of us aren’t cut out for that role. Marion Hammer sure isn’t. People like her fight, and the gun grabbers don’t like that because she’s effective at it. So, they threaten her and her family. If they can’t silence her with their typical rhetorical tricks, they’ll silence her with threats and intimidation.

People who make death threats against their opponents are nothing new. They’ve been with us for ages. It just seems like they’re ramping it up in this day and age. Maybe they’re not and this is an optical illusion, but I don’t think so.

The thing is, it’s not a good idea to threaten gun owners with death. We tend to be armed ready to meet those threats, if need be.